The Wedding Dress -- Sewing Day #1

I actually started the dress today.

Sewing it together, I mean.

Well, the lining at any rate.
I should be getting this started
after all
the wedding is
only
1 month from today!!!

The lining is 100% polyester,

very soft and drapy.

A perfect lining fabric.

Light as a feather.

Great to wear.

Not so great to sew with.

It slips, snags, shifts, puckers easily.

Generally a pain in the you-know-what.

But all is not lost.

It can be handled beautifully with soft, smooth seams

that hang just right.

Here are a few tips to help anyone working with this type of fabric.

As with any large project, save yourself some major irritation

and wind several bobbins of the fashion color, in this case white.

It

NEVER

happens at the end

of the

seam.

Never.

If your machine has a walking foot attachment,

use it.

"Load the elephant"

as my former clothing & textile professor

used to say.

The idea with a walking foot is to feed

both layers of fabric

through the stitching process

at the same time

minimizing puckering.

In lightweight fabrics,

puckering is a major problem.

When you have puckering,

the seams aren't flat

and they will hang funny.

Make sure your needle is of the right

size and weight

for the fabric.

I started with a size 10

but I immediately saw that it was

snaging the fabric.

So, I switched to a size 9 and

had a much better result.

Tissue paper.

If you don't know the

wonders of

tissue paper,

then you, my dears, have

truly been missing out.

With this lightweight, soft fabric,

I found the combo of a walking foot

and using tissue paper as a third layer

while stitching

helps to produce

perfect stitches with not a pucker in sight.

This is a sample stitch I did with the tissue paper underneath.

Even along the selvage, I got a very smooth seam.

This will go a long way in the overall look of the dress.

Just cut or tear several 2" strips of tissue paper.

While pinning the seams together, just include

the tissue paper

and sew right through all the layers.

Tear the paper away afterwards.

Try it.

Keep things clean!

I am especially mindful of this with a white fabric and

with this dress being such an important project.

1)  Clean your machine well but be careful with oiling.  Sew with scrap fabric until you are absolutely sure that no residual oil is dripping anywhere.

2)  Keep you hands clean.  Wash, wash, wash.  Stay away from lotions and creams, too.  They can leave oils on the fabrics.

3) Wipe down the table, machine, chair, etc., before each sewing session.

4)  Food, drinks and ink pens have NO place around fabrics.

5)  Have a lint roller handly.  It's so nice to take care of the stray threads, lint, dog hair, etc.  Just a quick swipe and their gone.

After a long day of sewing,

I now have a lining

ready for pin fitting,

seam finishing and pressing.

Coming soon:

Seam finishing

Pressing

Boning application

Bra cup application

Sew Happy,

I'm sharing my wedding dress experience
with some of the linky parties
found on my linky page.